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The crisis that the sector is experiencing is due to the low prices of the tuber, driven by a reduction in consumption due to the covid-19 pandemic, and imports from countries such as Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, denounces Fedepapa.
Seeking to cushion the losses that the potato harvest leaves them, the peasant growers bet on roads and tolls to enter and exit Bogotá to sell the product that has them on the verge of bankruptcy.
The farmers who traveled to the city were authorized by the district authorities to enter the peasant markets and squares of the capital to sell potatoes.
A true “papatón” has been met in various parts of the country. The peasants have demanded from the government greater aid to respond for the credit obligations that have been aggravated by the reduced market for potatoes that the imported product leaves them.
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Dozens of paperos have protested in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture, in the center of the capital, to ask for the approval of a public procurement plan that allows them to sell their products at remunerative prices, direct subsidies for the entire chain of the union and stop imports of their products. “We are supremely indignant with the National Government (because) seeing the crisis in the Colombian economic sector, Papero (…) there is no support despite the fact that there are resources,” Rosa Elena Rodríguez, a member of the national committee of we stopped. The crisis in the sector is due to low prices of the tuber, driven by a reduction in consumption due to the covid-19 pandemic, and imports of the product from countries such as Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, denounces the Colombian Federation of Producers of Pope (Fedepapa).
The union denounced that the crisis has also affected corn, mulberry, bean and dairy farmers, as well as banana and yuqueros, “who continue to suffer from the tragedies that plague peasants, indigenous people, agricultural entrepreneurs and workers in the sector due to the collapse abrupt product purchase prices ”. According to the Colombian Association of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (Acopi), up to August of this year more than 23,000 tons of potatoes had entered the country as “a product of the Free Trade Agreements (FTA) and the economic opening”, for what they asked the Government to “defend and promote national production.
A few days ago, potato growers began to take their products to the edge of the roads, waiting for Colombians to acquire their production. People close to the potato growers have denounced that the government has not fulfilled what it promised to the farmers and that has led to this crisis.
The Ministry of Agriculture said on October 20 that it would allocate 30,000 million pesos to the Support Program for the Marketing of Fresh Potato, which consists of paying direct economic compensation to small producers of the tuber, something that the union considered then insufficient . “They have presented us with absurd policies where some farmers, not all, are given compensation of 800,000 pesos (almost 220 dollars) that does not even pay (for) planting expenses. The policies that the Government is proposing and that do not provide a real solution to the crisis in the agrarian sector in Colombia are humiliating, ”insisted Rosa Elena Rodríguez.
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This Saturday the presence of the peasants with their products was seen in the tolls, the squares and the peasant markets. These markets organized by the mayor’s office are open until four in the afternoon in the parks of Alcalá, Fontibón, Kennedy and in the plaza de los artesanos. This form of sale has allowed the farmers to alleviate their problems to a minimum, but above all it has prevented the product from being damaged in the production centers.
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